Top Sunni official held in Baghdad

Armed men in military uniform raided the home of a senior Baghdad Sunni politician overnight and whisked him and several of his guards away, police said Saturday.

"Armed men came last night and detained the head of Baghdad provincial council Riyadh al-Adhadh and four of his guards from his house in Adhamiyah," a police colonel told AFP.

An official in the council said "Adhadh and several of his guards were abducted from his house very late at night" and taken to an unknown location.

It was not immediately clear whether the Sunni politician had been officially arrested by the authorities but the armed men who took him came in 10 large SUVs and wore military uniforms.

Adhadh, a doctor by training, is a member of Mutahidoon, the main Sunni Arab bloc in parliament. He spent most of 2012 in prison on charges of funding insurgent groups.

He survived a bomb attack on his convoy that killed one of his bodyguards in September 2013.

The Shiite-dominated government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has repeatedly accused the country's top Sunni politicians of links with armed insurgent groups.

Months of mounting sectarian tension followed by a militant onslaught that has plunged Iraq into its worst crisis in years and threatened to redraw its borders have further poisoned difficult relations between Sunni and religious Shiite politicians.

On a visit to the Iraqi capital Thursday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stressed that the country urgently needed a government "in which all Iraqis, regardless of background, feel represented."

US congratulates Iraq on electing new president

The United States on Thursday threw its weight behind the new president of Iraq, Fuad Masum, and urged him to form a "cohesive government" to help fight militants.

"By taking this crucial step, the Council of Representatives has demonstrated its commitment to uniting the country according to the constitution," deputy State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said, offering Washington's congratulations on Masum's election by parliament.

"Iraq's leaders now must take the next step in their democratic process by choosing a prime minister and forming a government," she said in a statement.

"Only with an inclusive, cohesive government that represents all Iraqis can Iraq most effectively and successfully confront the urgent security and humanitarian challenges it faces in the fight against" the Islamic State (IS), Harf added.

Later Thursday, US Vice President Joe Biden said in a statement that he called to congratulate Masum, and that they both "agreed on the need for Iraqis to unite to address the threat posed by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant."

The two men "agreed on the importance of forming a new Iraqi government as quickly as possible and working to arrive at an agreed-upon roadmap for governance," Biden said.

Parliament elected Masum, a Kurdish politician who served as the first prime minister of Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region more than two decades ago, by an overwhelming majority of 211 votes to 17 after Kurdish parties struck a late-night deal to support him.